Patricia Owens
Fellow & Tutor in International Relations; Professor of International Relations
Patricia went to a comprehensive school in London and, as the first in her family to go to university, did not even think to apply to Oxbridge… She particularly welcomes applications to study PPE from students at non-selective state schools.
Her research interests include twentieth-century international history and theory, disciplinary history and the history of international and political thought, and historical and contemporary practices of Anglo-American counterinsurgency and military intervention. She was Principal Investigator of the multi-award winning Leverhulme Research Project on Women and the History of International Thought.
Patricia’s current book project is a revisionist history of the practices, genres and audiences of international relations expertise in early to long mid-twentieth century Britain. The book takes up a set of figures largely unknown to IR to shed new light on the field’s racial and gendered history and the attendant consequences on its range and intellectual quality. It is thematically organized around professional contexts, kinship and intimate relations, fields and disciplines, and race/nation.
Publications
Monographs
“A History of International Thought Without Men” (working title, monograph under review)
Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social (Cambridge University Press, 2015) – Winner, BISA’s 2016 Susan Strange Best Book Prize; Winner, International Studies Association Theory Section Best Book Award; Runner up, Francesco Guicciardini Prize for Best Book in Historical IR; Special section, Security Dialogue
Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford University Press, 2007) – subject of special section in International Politics; Japanese translation; nominated for PSA W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize
Edited Volumes
Women’s International Thought: Towards A New Canon co-editor with S. Dunstan, K. Hutchings, K. Rietzler (Cambridge, forthcoming) – winner of the Susan Strange Prize for Best Book in International Studies and the International Studies Association Theory Section Best Edited Volume Award – subject of forthcoming fora or special sections in International Theory, International Politics Review, Journal of Contemporary Political Theory, H-Diplo, The Journal of the History of Ideas blog, and review essay in International Relations
Women’s International Thought: A New History, co-editor with Katharina Rietzler (Cambridge, 2021) – subject of forthcoming fora or special section in International Theory, International Politics Review, Journal of Contemporary Political Theory, and H-Diplo, and a review essay in International Relations
The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, 8th edition (Oxford, 2020) co-editor with J. Baylis and S. Smith and previous editions in 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017 – translated into Arabic, French, Korean, Polish, Greek, Turkish, Slovene, Macedonian, Kazakh, and Hungarian
Articles (select)
‘Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution’ in American Political Science Review, 2021 first view (with K. Hutchings) – OOIR’s ‘top trending’ of all political science articles in the week following publication; winner of the American Political Science Association Okin-Young Award in Feminist Political Theory for Best Article in English Language in 2021
‘Claudia Jones, International Thinker’ in Modern Intellectual History, 2021 firstview (with S. Dunstan)
‘Women and the History of International Thought’ in International Studies Quarterly, 62(3) 2018: 467-481
‘Decolonizing Civil War’ in CAL: International & Interdisciplinary Law Review, 4(2) 2017: 160-169
‘Racism in the Theory Canon: Hannah Arendt and “the one Great Crime in which America was Never Involved”‘ in Millennium, 45(33) 2017: 403-424
‘The International Origins of Hannah Arendt’s Historical Method’ in Political Power and Social Theory (32) 2017: 37-62
‘The Limits of Military Sociology’ in International Affairs, 96(3) 2017: 460-1462
‘International Historical What?’in International Theory, 8(3) 2016: 448-457
‘On the Conduct of Sociological Warfare: a reply to special section on Economy of Force’ in Security Dialogue, 47(3) 2016: 215-222
‘Introduction to the Forum: Historicizing the Social in International Thought’ in Review of International Studies, 41(4) 2015: 652-653
‘Method or Madness: Sociolatry in International Thought’ in Review of International Studies, 41(4) 2015: 655-674
‘From Bismarck to Petraeus: The Question of the Social and the Social Question in Counterinsurgency’ in ‘, 19(1) 2013: 135-157
Human Security and the Rise of the Social’ in Review of International Studies, 38(3) 2012: 547-567. Highly commended by the Article Prize Committee. Subject of a panel at 2018 ISA
‘Not Life but the World is at Stake: Hannah Arendt on Citizenship in the Age of the Social’ in Citizenship Studies, 16(2) 2012: 295-305
‘The Supreme Social Concept: The Un-worldliness of Modern Security’ in New Formations, 71: 2011: 14-29
‘Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism’ in Third World Quarterly, 31(7) 2010: 1147-1162
‘Reclaiming “Bare Life”? Against Agamben on Refugees’ in International Relations, 23(4) 2009: 567-82; reprinted in Betts and Loescher (eds.) Refugees in International Relations (Oxford)
‘Distinctions, Distinctions: “Public” and “Private” Force?’ in International Affairs, 84(5) 2008: 977-90; reprinted in Colás and Mabee (eds.) Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits and Empires (Columbia)
‘Humanity, Sovereignty and the Camps’ in International Politics, 45(4) 2008: 522-530
‘Beyond Strauss, Lies, and the War in Iraq: Hannah Arendt’s Critique of Neoconservatism’ in Review of International Studies, 33(2) 2007: 265-83; among top ten most cited articles during 2013-15
‘Xenophilia, Gender and Sentimental Humanitarianism’ in Alternatives, 29(3) 2004: 285-304
‘Theorising Military Intervention’ in International Affairs, 80(2) 2004: 355-365
‘Accidents Don’t Just Happen: The Liberal Politics of High-Tech Humanitarian War’ in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 32(3) 2003: 595-616
Book chapters (select)
‘Introduction: Toward a History of Women’s International Thought’ with Rietzler in Owens and Rietzler (eds.) Women’s International Thought: A New History (Cambridge, 2020)
‘Introduction: From International Politics to World Politics’, with Baylis and Smith in Baylis, Smith and Owens (eds.) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford, 8ed.)
‘How Dangerous it can be to be Innocent’ in M. Goldoni and C. McCorkindale (eds.) Hannah Arendt and the Law (Hart, 2012): 251-270
‘The Return of Realism? War and Changing Concepts of the Political’ in S. Scheipers and H. Strachan (eds.) The Changing Character of War (Oxford, 2011): 484-502
‘The Ethics of War: Critical Alternatives’ in D. Bell (ed.) Ethics and World Politics (Oxford, 2010): 309-323
‘Walking Corpses: Arendt on the Limits and the Possibilities of Cosmopolitan Politics’, in C. Moore and C. Farrands (eds.) International Relations Theory and Philosophy: Interpretive Dialogues (Routledge, 2010): 72-82
‘Hannah Arendt’, in J. Edkins and N. Vaughan-Williams (eds.) Critical Theorists and International Relations (Routledge, 2009): 31-41
‘The Ethic of Reality in Hannah Arendt’, in D. Bell (ed.) Political Thought and International Relations (Oxford, 2008), pp.105-121
‘Hannah Arendt, Violence, and the Inescapable Fact of Humanity’ in A.F. Lang and J. Williams (eds.) Hannah Arendt and International Relations (Palgrave, 2005): 41-65
Other (select)
Women’s Anticolonial International Thought, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website (with S. Dunstan)
Women Thinkers of the World Economy, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
Sex, Gender and Canon, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
On the Heirs to Agnes Headlam-Morley, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
What Happened to Women’s International Thought, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
A Political Economy of the “Exception”?, Security Dialogue/PRIO blog
Lucy Philip Mair, Early International Relations scholar, LSE History Blog
Susan Strange, Never Meant to be an Academic, LSE History Blog
Critical Dialogue between Jessica A. Stanton, author of Violence and Restraint in Civil War and Patricia Owens, author of Economy of Force, Perspectives on Politics, 15(4) 2017: 1102-1107
Economy of Force: a symposium, The Disorder of Things, opening post and reply to special section on Economy of Force (Cambridge, 2015)
Interview/Profile’, E-International Relations, January 2015